This invention relates to preoperative evaluation techniques and more particularly to a dental surveyor and method of using the surveyor for analyzing the rotational and translational movements that are required for correcting the patient's occlusion.
The category of non-critical osteotomies include all of the surgical procedures involving whole arch movements in which proximal and distal segments slide on one another such that bony contact is maintained and satisfactory healing is anticipated without special measures. This category involves (1) Le Fort I osteotomies, (2) oblique osteotomies, and (3) Obwegeser sagittal splits.
Various types of work-up techniques are available to the surgeon for different kinds of deformities. Certain techniques are better than others in terms of the corrective movements that they best measure. Dental models, although confined to dentoalveolar structures, nonetheless accurately document the anatomy they record in all three dimensions. When the mandibular and maxillary models are mounted on an articulator in the two positions representing the malocclusion and the proposed corrective occlusion, they display in three dimensional from the desired information for the corrective surgery. However, in order to fully analyze the proposed corrective surgery during a work-up, it is desirable to convert the three dimensional information into the rotational and translational movements that are needed to achieve the necessary jaw movements through surgery.
It is accordingly a general object of the invention to provided an apparatus and method for obtaining rotational and translational movements from articulated three dimensional dental models;
It is a specific object of the invention to provide a dental surveyor and method therefor that utilizes the three dimensional information contained in articulated dental models.
It is another object of the invention to provide an apparatus that produces a visual indication on the dental models of the movements, both rotational and translational, of selected points of anatomical interest.
It is a feature of the invention that the apparatus thereof can be employed in conjunction with a wide variety of dental models.
It is another feature of the invention that the apparatus thereof allows the surgeon to identify and visually mark all anatomical points of interest that lie within preselected horizontal and vertical planes which intersect the articulated dental models.
It is still another feature of the invention that the apparatus thereof can be fabricated from relatively simple and inexpensive hardware.